Blockchain Art Exhibitions Explore the Bitcoin Technology’s Future

Pokémon, postage stamps and the strategy board game Risk. Simon Denny uses everyday objects like these to illuminate how technology shapes the way we live and work. In his latest exhibition, the Berlin-based New Zealand artist explores blockchain, the little-understood technology underpinning the digital currency bitcoin.Opening Thursday at New York’s Petzel Gallery, “Blockchain Future States” looks at competing views about how the technology should evolve.

Large cutout images of the leaders of three leading blockchain companies—Digital Asset Holdings LLC, 21 Inc. and Ethereum—stand near globe-like structures meant to highlight how new currency systems could challenge traditional forms of statehood. A Risk board for each firm lays out the company’s strategy to create a new world order. A similar installation, “Blockchain Visionaries,” is at the Berlin Biennale until Sept. 18.